


Awash In Flame

by bewarethesmirk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10665036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewarethesmirk/pseuds/bewarethesmirk
Summary: For seven months after Sam leaves, Dean keeps to the east of the Mississippi.





	Awash In Flame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marciaelena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marciaelena/gifts).



> Written for spnspringfling as a gift for [marciaelena.](http://marciaelena.livejournal.com/)
> 
> Thanks so much to Amanda, Sam, Squal, Dorian and firesign10 for betaing and emotional support!

For seven months after Sam leaves, Dean keeps to the east of the Mississippi.

John has been chasing hunts across the Pacific Northwest. Dean declines to go along and John merely shrugs, like it's easy to let go of the son he has left. So Dean makes his own way, with a pile of rumpled newspapers with Sharpie-circled classifieds in the back seat. Jerky wrappers and soda cans litter the front, and it's a testament to Baby’s steady temperament that she's tolerating Dean at all.

For seven months after Sam leaves, Dean pounds the pavement. His days are fueled by shitty coffee, alcohol and a crumpled piece of paper that never leaves the sanctuary of his jacket pocket.

*

After a few weeks’ hunt tussling with a slippery poltergeist, Dean holes up in a roadside tavern that's little more than aluminum siding. He saunters in with ripped jeans, reeking of graveyard dirt and sweat, and nobody bats an eye. Inside is a haven for truckers and the locals who reside in this part of the Florida panhandle that’s more rural country than resort beaches.

Dean would have only knocked back some cheap shots of whiskey chased by a few beers, but the bartender is tall and lean, dark shaggy hair and the kind of sunshine smile that reminds Dean of—

Dean only talks to him, leans across the bar with deliberate smiles and slow sips of his beer. He observes the bartender, cataloging the differences between this relative stranger and the brother he once knew. Hell, maybe this man is even less of a stranger than his brother.

This man stares, watching the movements of Dean’s throat. Dean could leave his number here, battered makeshift business card like a lure on the bar. He could, but he doesn't.

If he walks out with his hand clutching his jacket pocket (the one with the number folded inside) and feeling that old spark igniting in his stomach, threatening to torch him whole—it's peachy. Just a moment of weakness.

*

The poltergeist has taken its toll on Dean—or so he tells himself—so he stays in this neck of Florida for nearly a week, spending a stupid amount of his time slapping the side of the old TV set in his motel room in hopes it’ll go from buzzy static to something clearer and even more of his time haunting the tavern. He claims the same seat and drinks the same drinks, easing into a routine, even if it is only short-lived.

The bartender is named James and he's working three jobs in hopes of saving up for college. He flirts with Dean, but Dean never lets it get too far and basks in the feeling of knowing this imitation, however pale, wants him enough to talk too long and look too much. Really, though, he’s just grasping at straws.

He's a man wandering in a desert craving an oasis from the fire-beat of the sun.

He fields James’ increasingly interested questions with the ease of well-honed subterfuge. On the seventh straight night in the bar, when James slips him _his_ number on a napkin, and Dean takes it with a tremor running through his hand (alcohol, he tells himself, that’s all), he winks at James and walks outside to puke behind the ramshackle bar.

He leaves the napkin on the ground and curls his fingers into his coat to make sure the piece of paper is still there.

*

Dean leaves the next morning without saying goodbye, guilt knotted up in his chest. He drives and drives and drives, blasting Zep and clutching at the wheel, all the way to Baton Rouge and then beyond.

Once he's back in no man’s land, he pulls Baby over, snatches a fifth of liquor from her trunk and takes a shaky, burning gulp. He takes out the piece of paper and memorizes the phone number scribbled there.

*

Damn James. Dean was doing fine until him, and now he's powering through Texas, sun blistering the black of Baby and burning the fuck out of his left arm, all the while the chasm between him and California keeps shrinking and shrinking.

No thought, only action, and the spark that's burning into a fire in his belly, screaming _Sam_.

*

It's a pay-by-the-hour shithole in Vegas where Dean finally stops and sleeps for twelve hours, exhausted after the long drive and the even longer hunger.

When he wakes and forces down the motor acid that the neighboring diner calls coffee, nearly swallowing his steak and eggs whole, he goes back to his motel, the number beaten into his subconscious, ready to be dialed.

Instead, Dean first calls Dad. The phone goes to voicemail, as it often does. In his message, Dean neglects to mention he's in Vegas. Dean throws down the phone and goes to piss and splash cold water on his face.

When he returns to the room, his phone is lying there, taunting him and he thinks, _Fuck it, I'm no pussy_ , even though it burns in him how much he _is_. Sam, if anything, is not a pussy. He's an idiot, but he took off on his own to chase what he wants.

Which apparently isn't Dean.

Dean’s hands clench and he grabs the phone and dials the number he already knows without ever calling it. He’s changed his number so Sam won't know it's him. Maybe the unrecognizable number make him answer, maybe it won't.

Dean tastes copper on his tongue while he listens to the ring and then there's a moment where someone picks up and Dean’s knees buckle and fortunately he hits the bed with the phone still pressed painfully to his ear, listening to breathing which seems to stretch forever, but it really doesn't.

And then: “Hello?”

It's Sam. It's like Dean’s guts liquefy at that one word. Never apart from Sam in his whole life, the time without him has been like the gap between dying and dead, the slow bleed out, while this evil thing in Dean stokes higher and hotter until the spark he has for Sam starts to devour him whole.

He remembers a prick of a teacher who once said, “You don't know what you have until it's gone,” and he knows that he knew what he had, but now the other things—filthy, awful, wonderful things—he wants burn even hotter in his selfish gut. Sam doesn't deserve him, this, so Dean does the only thing he can as Sam repeats, “ _Hello_?”

Dean thinks of anything to say—anything at all—and comes up blank, so he hangs up.

Like a pussy.

*

Vegas is the answer to a prayer Dean never made, the perfect playground. A few days blur by as he plays pool shark and gambles and lines his pockets and drinks himself into oblivion. He meets a virgin and fucks her slow and good in the back of the Impala till she's sobbing.

Three days later, he’s drunk after a long day of playing blackjack at an upscale hotel on the Strip and being handed vodka sodas like he sold his soul for them. Back in his seedy motel, he picks up his phone and dials. Swears that if Sam answers, he won't hang up.

Two rings only.

“Hello?”

Dean breathes.

“Hello?”

“Sam.”

There’s a pause of dead silence. “Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Dean.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, like he's reassuring Sam. Which is funny considering his stomach is twisted into knots and a tremor works its way through his very fucking being.

“Oh, God,” Sam says.

Dean grips the phone so tight he fears he'll break it.

“Um,” he says.

“Where are you?” Sam asks, not what Dean expected at all.

“Vegas.”

Sam sucks in a breath. “Are you—are you with Dad?”

“No.”

“Come here,” Sam says, like it’s easy, like it's everything.

Dean is powerless to say anything but, “Okay,” and then he hangs up and packs his duffel like his ass is on fire.

Sam wants him to come. Sam, who sounds the same but older. Sam, who is exactly everything James was not.

Baby’s tires squeal as Dean leaves the parking lot to head northwest.

*  
Food and sleep evade Dean until he makes it past the barrier of Palo Alto. He scarcely allows himself to think as he pulls into a vacant parking lot and calls Sam again.

It's three o’clock in the morning, but Dean has no fucking time for manners, so he calls. His little brother sounds surprisingly awake, probably reading or studying for class—or reading for fun. Geek.

Sam gives him his dorm address and vague directions and says he’ll meet him out front.

Dean makes his way there easily enough, with his heart in his throat and sweat creeping down his spine. He illegally parks in front of the dorm and gets out, air clean and surprisingly nippy for May.

All Dean’s thoughts turn into a blur when the front door opens loudly in the too-still night and his brother walks down the steps. Dean steps forward and they stare at each other for a tense moment.

Why is Dean here? He's not prepared. He's not drunk. Hell, he's mostly skin and bones, sleep deprived and not even a man, just a cesspool of yearning.

“Dean,” Sam says. His name carries gravity. Sam rushes forward and captures his shoulders and smiles ear-to-ear and then pulls him into a hug that nearly suffocates the life out of Dean.

Dean barely remembers walking up to Sam’s single dorm room. Barely remembers being ushered onto the bed and handed a bottle of beer, beer which Dean swallows, along with his big brother urge to tell Sam he ain't old enough.

Sam is taller and broader and weirdly skinnier, which makes Dean worry a little. Is he subsisting on ramen noodles and dreams or some such Joe College bullshit?

“I'm surprised you called,” Sam says, running his fingers through his hair, longer than Dean remembers from the bus station, and Dean feels his hackles rise.

“You're the one who left,” he spits out, and knows instantly that he sounds weak, but he can't help it.

Sam rolls his eyes in such a familiar fashion that it spawns an ache behind Dean's sternum.

“I didn't want hunting and _Dad_ , all the demands.” Sam throws his hands up in front of the Dashboard Confessional poster on the wall. “I didn't want to feel guilty about you anymore,” he whispers, slow, tapering off.

The tension and the pain and the distance ratchets up until it’s all too much for him to handle.

Dean’s guts clench as he stares at Sam's steady eyes and his strong shoulders. “You don't know anything about guilt,” Dean seethes, instantly regretting it, but helpless against the anger curdling inside of him.

“The hell I don't,” Sam says, and suddenly he's in Dean's space, between Dean’s thighs, pressing closer. Strong, surprisingly gentle hands cup Dean’s face, Sam's gaze stays fixed on his, and Sam says, “Please.”

At first Dean doesn't understand, just feels cool fingertips under his jaw, but inside of him that spark ignites into a white-hot flame.

“I tried to stop,” Sam says. “I tried to forget you were more than just my brother.”

A furious sound unleashes from Dean's mouth. How dare Sam try to forget him? And then the words catch up to him: _more than just my brother_.

That's when the flame consumes, and he's defenseless as Sam edges even closer and slots their lips together, chaste but firm. In the moment that it takes, Dean’s burning alive. Sam's hot mouth separates from his, leaving Dean bereft and tingling.

Dean tucks his face into the warmth of Sam’s neck. There he finds the bravery to whisper, “I met a guy—a—”

Sam's hand, now on the back of his neck, tugs him up, a bit vicious. “A _guy_?”

Dean swallows against the sharpness in Sam's eyes and presses his mouth to Sam’s cheekbone. “A bartender. No one. Just.” He takes a shuddering breath of Sam's skin. “He looked like you, but less…” Dean finds himself unable to finish. Luckily, he doesn't have to.

Sam sucks in a breath. “Dean,” he says and their gazes lock, and Dean finds his hands gripping Sam's hips tight, mouth joined against Sam's again until Sam licks his upper lip and it's too much, too incendiary. Dean is dying, marked for Hell when he meets Sam’s rough-slick tongue and sucks into his mouth like it's a dick.

They kiss sweet and dirty and everywhere in between for so long that Dean’s lips are raw.

After minutes or maybe hours, Sam convinces him to take the small twin bed and Dean sleeps like the dead with the knowledge of what his brother’s mouth tastes like.

*

The next day, Sam is still there and it's not a hallucination. Sam shows him around campus, catches him up on his life and they touch far more than necessary.

During lunch, Dad calls for the first time in weeks. Dean steps outside of the diner to take the call.

When Dean goes back in and tells Sam he has to go meet Dad in Spokane, Sam catches his jacket sleeve across the table. He's pale.

“I have to,” Dean says, and knows it's not entirely true.

Sam's voice is both bold and timid as he asks, “You'll come back?”

“Yeah, Sammy,” Deans says and grabs his hand, flush creeping up his cheeks.

Sam squeezes back.

*

The highway north to Spokane cuts along the coast, but Dean's half trusting Baby to mind the curves. His mind flickers between everything Sam makes him feel, that dangerous sense of being whole, and fearing the whole trip was just another dream fueled by whiskey and loneliness.

But then he glances at his phone as it vibrates with an incoming call and sees the numbers glowing there.


End file.
